Tepid hokum adventure tale from Cecil B. De Mille
("The Ten
Commandments"/"Samson
and Dehlila") that comes to life in the third act when
Ray Milland and
John Wayne battle a squid. The fake giant squid was
operated by an
electronic
keyboard. It's based on a story in the Saturday
Evening Post by Thelma
Strabel and written by Alan Le May, Charles Bennett
and Jesse Lasky Jr.
The Technicolor classic won an Oscar for special
effects. The great
underwater
scenes were filmed in the Santa Monica Pan Pacific
Marine Museum. The
rest
was filmed on location in Key West, Florida.

The film is set in the 1840s, and mostly takes place
around
Key West,
Florida, where pirates make it difficult for
legitimate salvagers to
make
an honest living. Cutthroat pirate King Cutler
(Raymond Massey) causes
the wreck of Captain Jack Stuart's ship the Jubilee on
a reef, just
like
he has many others. The fiery Southern belle Loxi
Claiborne (Paulette
Goddard)
runs a rival salvaging shipping company since her
father died, and
rescues
Jack and nurses him back to health in her Key West
mansion. But no one
pays for saving the crew, as King loots the valuable
cargo. In any
case,
Loxi and Jack fall in love. Jack says he dreams of
three things: 1) To
captain the modern steam vessel called the Southern
Cross. 2) Take over
the Devereaux shipping company. 3) marry Loxi.

The story then picks up in Charleston, South
Carolina,
where Loxi
is sent to stay with her Aunt Henrietta Beresford
(Heda Hopper). There
Loxi meets the foppish Steve Tolliver (Ray Milland),
the office pencil
pushing second in command of the Devereaux shipping
company, who pulls
some corny ventriloquist bits using his dog as a
puppet. Steve falls
for
Loxi, and we got a love triangle on our hands. Loxi
manages to talk
Steve
into giving Jack command of the Southern Cross. But
the jealous Jack,
learning
that old man Devereaux died and Steve took over the
company, makes a
bargain
with the devil as he agrees to help King's piracy.
This brings about a
court trial with Jack on trial for the wreck of the
Southern Cross. The
court introduces evidence that a woman passenger died
aboard the
Southern
Cross, even though Jack says there were no passengers.
That woman is
believed
to be the missing Drusilla (Susan Hayward), Loxi's
cousin, who is in
love
with King Cutler's handsome brother Dan (Robert
Preston)--a partner in
the treacherous schemes to cause wrecks. To gain
evidence against King
and find out for sure if the woman murdered was
Drusilla, Jack and
Steve
go deep-sea diving. When Steve is attacked by the
giant squid Jack
redeems
himself and comes to his rescue, but with tragic
results.

The acting was mostly hammy and uninspiring, except
for
Milland's
hammy off-beat performance and Wayne's usual heroic
one except for a
momentary
lapse where he becomes the bad guy. Though
entertaining the film excels
only through its special effects, which were good for
its day but pale
when compared to similar special effects in modern
times.